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Adrienne Rich

The problem, finally, is not that of who does the housework and childcare, whether or not one can find a life companion who will share in the sustenance and repair of daily life – crucial as these may be in the short run. It is a question of the community we are reaching for in our work and on which we can draw; whom we envision as our hearers, our co-creators, our challengers; who will urge us to take our work further, more seriously, than we had dared; on whose work we can build. Women have done these things for each other, sought each other in community, even if only in enclaves, often through correspondence, for centuries. Denied space in the universities, the scientific laboratories, the professions, we have devised our networks. We must not be tempted to trade the possibility of enlarging and strengthening those networks, and of extending them to more and more women, for the illusion of power and success as “exceptional” or “privileged” women in the professions. Rich, Adrienne, 1976, "Conditions for Work: The Common World of Women"